By Amy Le, Interhigh Mentor, Junior @ UC Berkeley

Notice that the church had the authority, and the responsibility to excommunicate this man who was unrepentant in this sin.  How does this square with people’s view of the proper extent of spiritual authority in the church today?

Because of today’s predominant culture of acceptance and tolerance, people find it offensive when judgments are cast that challenge their beliefs. Everyone should be allowed to express themselves in the way that they see best and no one should judge. We are living in an era of postmodernism where everything is relative and no one can claim that there exists absolute truths. Many people try to bring this worldview into the church. They come to church to hear the truth but at the same time they don’t want the truth to have any implications on their lives. As a result, when someone in a position of authority points out some hypocrisies in their lives they get defensive and offended. They want to live life the way they see best and they don’t want the gospel of truth, but the gospel of tolerance. However, what makes the gospel powerful is the truths it possesses. These truths have claims on our lives and when we don’t conform to it there are consequences. When the church, a body of believers, starts to tolerate sin instead of upholding the truth, it deprives the gospel of its power. As I think about my life, I am very thankful for the commitment of those who have gone before me for keeping the purity of the gospel. Because of their sacrifice and commitment to the truth, I am able to experience the gospel so powerfully in my own life.
I struggled a lot with pride in high school and even now in college. Instead of seeing that it was by the grace of God expressed through the love and commitment of others that I was able to make it this far in life, I attributed everything to my own strength. I prided myself in the fact that I had gone through a lot and as a result I looked down on others and also became really defensive when my leaders would try to speak truth to me. I was really self-centered and thought the world revolved around me. My perception of reality was really distorted and I can’t express how thankful I am that my leaders and many others, because of their commitment to obeying God and keeping the purity of the gospel, spoke truth to me. I think the harshest but also the most loving correction I received was when a leader took me aside in high school and said, “Amy it’s really hard to see Christ in you because you are so full of yourself.” Those were painful words to hear and initially I didn’t respond to it in the right way because of my pride. However, looking back I am so thankful for that leader who, instead of just tolerating, spoke truth to me. Because of her I was able to see that there was something wrong with the way I had been living my life.  Those words of truth helped me to see reality from a different perspective and confront the hypocrisies in my life.

By Isaac Seong, Interhigh Mentor, Junior @ UC Berkeley

Notice that the church had the authority, and the responsibility to excommunicate this man who was unrepentant in this sin.  How does this square with people’s view of the proper extent of spiritual authority in the church today?

I think the notion that the church has that much authority and responsibility is foreign to a lot of Christians. Often, people view spiritual leaders as people who they will see on Fridays and Sundays for the messages. The leaders can teach them about the Bible, but they cannot tell people in the congregation what to do. The leaders can hang out with the people but should not rebuke them for blatant sins in their lives. Those are the views a lot of people have towards spiritual leaders. These people do not want spiritual leaders to come into their lives and tell them that their lives need to change.
This is something I struggled with a lot and still struggle with. Growing up in a church where most of the leaders I had in church were not very good examples of Christ, as they went clubbing, drank, or acted in ways that are not very Godly, I lost a lot of respect for the leaders. I just saw them as older figures who are my leaders simply because they are older than me. I was never confronted about my spiritual life in high school. Thus, when I came to college and started attending Gracepoint, my view of what a spiritual leader should be like had to change. In the past two and a half years, I have been talked to and corrected several times by my leaders. Because of my previous view that did not give spiritual leaders such authority and responsibility, I initially reacted to these talks and corrections with what some people call “face of death.” However, through God’s grace and my leaders’ patience and prayer, I began to see how those talks and corrections were indeed out of love for me and my relationship with God, and I began to see the proper extent of spiritual authority in the church. Now I see that the leaders God has placed in my life have the responsibility and authority to help me grow closer to God, even if that sometimes takes “harsh” methods, like with the man in the passage. Although I still struggle with this, now I accept their spiritual authority because I know God is using them to mold me into a man who can be used by God. Praise the Lord for being faithful and guiding me through my leaders and I pray that God will continue to humble me so that I can be someone teachable.

By Sam Hudnet, Interhigh Mentor,  Senior @ UC Berkeley

What values are being upheld by this instruction from Apostle Paul, and what are some results that flow from failing to uphold these values under the banner of tolerance or kindness?

The value of community here is greatly apparent: it is necessary for avoiding sin and for spiritual growth. So when I fail to recognize the importance of confession to my brothers and the depth of relationships that results from it, formed through openness and prayer producing trust and compassion, I am rejecting one of God’s most precious gifts to me! How often I take for granted my brothers and don’t seek to grow in my relationships with them! This is completely immature and selfish, as I leave all the work of forming relationships to them while treating God’s precious gift as a given, even as something to which I’m entitled. And indeed the community, the relationships through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, formed between believers, is precious. Precious enough that the Apostle Paul, and even Christ himself in Matthew 18:17, suggests that the final action of correction for a brother is to put him out of the church – an act bringing about such shocking loss that it might bring about repentance. But again, in my own life I must avoid the prideful tendency all the more so that I do not waste this fellowship! For my tendency in trying to keep fellowship without confession is to hide sin (as Satan takes hold of my heart when I am weak and twists it to believe that brothers value me conditionally and not by Christ’s sacrifice and love).

And so all the more I must confess, because in the act of hiding sin for the sake of preserving fellowship I am actually distancing myself from that fellowship, hiding from them, I lose first what I most seek to hold on to. So it is that God flips the rules of this world upside-down – when I do what pride says will most damage fellowship I grow in it. And so too in preservation of what is most important, fellowship, I must be willing to step up to correct my friends and brothers when they are out of line and to receive correction when I am so. The tendencies of this world may say, and in this generation more than ever, not to confront others, but, so to speak, rather “let sleeping dragons lie.” Yet here it is clear as day that I must be willing to challenge those values for what is higher, the very thing that preserves the fellowship itself, and this is the value of righteousness that comes through Christ. It may damage worldly relationships for me to question each other, as pride is at stake, but in Christ we are all clothed in righteousness and are to be proud of God’s work alone. So in questioning a brother you do him the good service of pointing out his sins that he may confess and so draw closer to him by being a good brother and helping to further Christ’s work in him.

Yet very often I am driven to one of two ends: fear too much losing the relationship or even my own comfort in confronting my brother, or become arrogant with self-righteousness and hold the brother’s sin against him. Both destroy, rather than build up, my relationship with him. So I must watch my own heart as I confront my brothers, and Apostle Paul makes it clear here that it is for the sake of repentance and thus salvation that we go to any end to correct our brothers. I cannot use a brother’s sin, or my own righteousness for that matter, which is from Christ alone, to put him down and lift myself up. I remember holding against one of my brothers for a long time a particularly nasty sin in his life that had come to light. I assumed myself superior somehow simply because I had avoided (and very narrowly at that) the very same sin. I thought that I should be doing better things for God than he and that I was more righteous and spiritually mature. But in fact it was he who was maturing, having his sin made public and having repented of it, while I was living a life of unrepentant sin. My pride drove me into an absurd situation that stunted my spiritual growth and broke our fellowship even though I never actively voiced my thoughts (or the dissatisfaction of their outcome – his apparent growth and my spiritual deadness). But it is by confession and the blood of Christ that we have fellowship in the first place, and though it took a great deal of prayer and the calling to take communion to remind me of this, those were what brought me back into a right relationship with God and with my brother.